Category Archives: Data Processing

If you need to access data from a Jet DB file, there’s a relatively simple way to do it in Windows without Microsoft Office, by using LibreOffice and creating an ODBC data source.

First open your Windows/SysWOW64/ folder in explorer and run odbcad32.exe as Administrator. The ODBC Data Source Administrator should open. Once it does, stay on the User DSN tab and click the Add button. Select the Microsoft Access Driver and click Finish. On the new window that will open write the name of your file (or anything you want, for that matter) in the Data Source Name field, next click on the Select button of the Database subsection, and select your file. Click OK to close both windows.

Now that the data source is set up, open Libre Office Base, select Connect to an existing database, and select ODBC in the dropdown menu. Click on Browse, choose the data source you just created, and click OK. Click on Finish and save your config as a new file. Now you should have access to all of the database tables in the file.

This method has the disadvantage of requiring you to create a new ODBC data source for each file you need to open, but it sure beats all other ways I’ve found so far that don’t require using a suitable version of Microsoft Access.